Mad World (57 page)

All he managed of the sequel was a couple of pages concerning the brief period in 1925 when he was living in London with his brother Alec. His provisional title for the volume was ‘A Little Hope’, no doubt an allusion to his religious conversion. But if Evelyn Waugh had lived to complete the second volume of his autobiography, the centrality of Madresfield and the Lygons to his whole vision of life would have become fully apparent. The theme of the volume, like that of
Brideshead
, would have been ‘the household of the faith’. What might he have called the chapter on Mad that would have been at the centre of it? He could not have done better than borrow that of the first of the three parts of his biography of Ronald Knox, published a few years before: ‘Laughter and the Love of Friends.’

SOURCES

The following list is not intended as a display of industry nor as a guarantee of good faith. They are the books which, while I was working on this subject, I found chiefly interesting and relevant; which I can commend to any reader who wishes to amplify details that I have stated too briefly, too vaguely, or too allusively.

(Evelyn Waugh, Appendix to
Edmund Campion
, 1935)

Waugh prefaced his life of Edmund Campion with the comment that: ‘There is great need for a complete, scholar’s work on the subject. This is not it. All I have done is select the incidents which struck a novelist as important, and relate them in a single narrative.’ In the case of Waugh himself, there is no further need for a complete, scholar’s work on the subject: we already have one in Martin Stannard’s two large volumes,
Evelyn Waugh: The Early Years, 1903–1939
(1987) and
Evelyn Waugh: The Later Years, 1939–1966
(1992), supplemented by Selina Hastings,
Evelyn Waugh: A Biography
(1994) and Douglas Lane Patey’s acute
The Life of Evelyn Waugh: A Critical Biography
(1998). The first biography,
Evelyn Waugh
(1975), by Christopher Sykes remains invaluable because it was based on personal acquaintance (with the Lygons as well as Waugh). The best account of Waugh’s Oxford friendships is Humphrey Carpenter’s ‘group biography’
The Brideshead Generation
(1989), though perhaps the one weakness of this engaging book is its lack of attention to the Lygons.

My aim, by contrast to that of the ‘comprehensive’ biographer, has been to select, if I may adapt Waugh’s phrase, ‘the incidents which struck me as important’ in the genesis and aftermath of
Brideshead Revisited
, and relate them in a single narrative that illustrates what I believe to be the key themes of Waugh’s life. It therefore seems appropriately in the spirit of Waugh himself to offer, in place of detailed reference notes, a
brief listing of the principal published and unpublished sources on which I have drawn while working on the subject, together with a chronological list of Evelyn Waugh’s book-length works and the major editions of his letters, diaries and shorter pieces.

For further details of sources and references, and background information on the writing of the book, please visit the author’s website, www.paulabyrne.co.uk

EVELYN WAUGH’S MAJOR WORKS OF FICTION

Decline and Fall: An Illustrated Novelette
(1928)

Vile Bodies
(1930)

Black Mischief
(1932)

A Handful of Dust
(1934)

Scoop: A Novel about Journalists
(1938)

Put Out More Flags
(1942)

Work Suspended
(1942)

Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder
(1945)

The Loved One: An Anglo-American Tragedy
(1948)

Helena
(1950)

OTHER WORKS BY EVELYN WAUGH

Rossetti, His Life and Works
(1928; biography)

Labels
,
A Mediterranean Journal
(1930; travel)

Remote People
(1931; travel)

Ninety-Two Days
(1934; travel)

Edmund Campion
(1935; biography)

Mr Loveday’s Little Outing and Other Sad Stories
(1936; short stories)

Waugh in Abyssinia
(1936; travel)

Robbery Under Law
(1939; travel)

Scott-King’s Modern Europe
(1947; novella)

The Holy Places
(1952; travel)

Love Among the Ruins
(1953; short story)

The Life of the Right Reverend Ronald Knox
(1959; biography)

A Tourist in Africa
(1960; travel)

Basil Seal Rides Again
(1963; short story)

A Little Learning
(1964; autobiography)

The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh,
edited by Michael Davie (1976)

The Letters of Evelyn Waugh,
edited by Mark Amory (1980)

The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh,
edited by Donat Gallagher (1983)

Mr Wu and Mrs Stitch: The Letters of Evelyn Waugh and Diana Cooper,
edited by Artemis Cooper (1991)

The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh,
edited by Charlotte Mosley (1996)

The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh,
edited by Ann Pasternak Slater (1998)

UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS

Some of Waugh’s letters to the Lygon sisters are included in Mark Amory’s selected edition of the
Letters of Evelyn Waugh,
but others remain in manuscript. A collection of eighty of those to Maimie is in the library of Georgetown University in Washington DC, while those to Coote, together with a second batch to Maimie, are in private hands. The letters from Maimie to Evelyn are in his incoming correspondence, which is in the British Library.

The published edition of
The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh
has been censored in places. Where necessary, I have silently restored omissions by consulting the original, which is in the huge and indispensable Evelyn Waugh collection in the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

Alexander Waugh, Evelyn’s grandson, has most generously allowed me to consult a wealth of material in his private family archive, including original manuscripts, transcripts of interviews, newspaper and magazine articles, photographs and Arthur Waugh’s diaries. He has also provided me with some key references to Madresfield in a recently acquired and extremely important collection of Evelyn’s letters that has long been thought lost.

Charles Linck, who unearthed the film
The Scarlet Woman,
kindly sent me a copy of his invaluable unpublished PhD dissertation, ‘The Development of Evelyn Waugh’s Career: 1903–1939’ (University of Kansas, 1962). His privately published correspondence with Terence Greenidge is also an exceptionally valuable, almost unknown source:
Evelyn Waugh in Letters by Terence Greenidge
(1994).

The letters from the Earl and Countess Beauchamp to Lady Dorothy Lygon are in the private family archive at Madresfield. Materials for the servant’s-eye view of Madresfield are in the local history collection of the Malvern Public Library and the Worcestershire Record Office.

The hitherto unseen Beauchamp divorce petition is in the National Archives at Kew. There are several small collections of unpublished Beauchamp papers, including his letters to Lloyd George, which are in the Library of the House of
Lords. Correspondence and papers relating to his governorship of New South Wales (in the State Library of New South Wales, Mitchell Library, Sydney) and his surviving papers at Madresfield provide the raw material for a full-scale political biography of this remarkable man, but because of the scandal nobody has yet undertaken one: perhaps it will now be possible.

OTHER SOURCES

Among the many other works consulted, the following have been especially useful:

Acton, Harold,
Memoirs of an Aesthete
(1948)

Amory, Mark,
Lord Berners: The Last Eccentric
(1998)

Barrow, Andrew,
Gossip: A History of High Society from 1920 to 1970
(1978)

Beevor, Antony,
Crete: The Battle and the Resistance
(1991)

Blow, Sydney,
Through Stage Doors
(1958)

Byron, Robert,
Letters Home
, edited by Lucy Butler (1991)

Chapman, Hester W., and the Princess Romanovsky-Pavlovsky (eds),
Diversion: published for the benefit of the Yugoslav Relief Society
(1946)

Cooper, Diana,
Autobiography
(1965; originally in 3 vols, 1958–60)

Davenport-Hines, Richard, ‘Lygon, William, seventh Earl Beauchamp (1872–1938)’, in
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(2004)

Davis, Robert Murray,
Evelyn Waugh, Writer
(1981)

De la Cour, John,
Madresfield Court
(undated guidebook)

Dickinson, Peter (ed.),
Lord Berners: Composer, Writer, Painter
(2008)

Dutton, David, ‘William Lygon, 7th Earl Beauchamp’,
Journal of Liberal History
, Summer 1999

Field, Leslie,
Bendor: The Golden Duke of Westminster
(1983)

Fielding, Daphne,
The Duchess of Jermyn Street: The Life and Good Times of Rosa Lewis of the Cavendish Hotel
, with preface by Evelyn Waugh (1964)

Fothergill, John,
An Innkeeper’s Diary
(1931)

Glen, Alexander,
Young Men in the Arctic
(1935)

Green, Martin,
Children of the Sun: A Narrative of Decadence in England after 1918 (1980
)

Greenidge, Terence,
Degenerate Oxford?
(1930)

Hance, Captain J. E.,
School for Horse and Rider
(1932)

Hollis, Christopher,
Oxford in the Twenties
(1976)

Isherwood, Christopher,
The World in the Evening
(1954)

Kavanagh, Julie, ‘Lady Mary Lygon Revisits Brideshead’,
Harpers & Queen
, October 1981

Knox, James,
A Biography of Robert Byron
(2003)

Lancaster, Marie-Jaqueline (ed.),
Brian Howard: Portrait of a Failure
(1968)

Lygon, Lady Dorothy, ‘Madresfield and Brideshead’, in
Evelyn Waugh and his World
, edited by David Pryce-Jones (1973)

‘Madresfield Court, Worcestershire’,
Country Life
, 30 March 1907

Mosley, Charlotte (ed.),
The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters
(2007)

Mosley, Diana,
Loved Ones: Pen Portraits
(1985)

——
The Pursuit of Laughter: Essays, Articles, Reviews and a Diary
(2008)

Mulvagh, Jane,
Madresfield
(2007)

Nicolson, Harold,
Diaries 1907
–
1964
, edited by Nigel Nicolson (2004)

Parker, Peter,
The Old Lie: The Great War and the Public School Ethos
(1987)

Powell, Anthony,
Memoirs
(vols 1–3, 1976–80)

Rolfe, Frederick, ‘Baron Corvo’,
The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole
(1934)

Stannard, Martin (ed.),
Evelyn Waugh: The Critical Heritage
(1984)

Strachey, Julia,
Julia: A Portrait of Julia Strachey by Herself and Frances Partridge
(1983)

Taylor, D. J.,
Bright Young People
(2007)

Treglown, Jeremy,
Romancing: The Life and Work of Henry Green
(2000)

Waugh, Alec,
A Year to Remember: A Reminiscence of 1931
(1975)

——
My Brother Evelyn and other Profiles
(1967)

Waugh, Alexander,
Fathers and Sons
(2004)

Waugh, Auberon,
Another Voice
(1986)

Weaver, Cora,
A Short Guide to Charles Darwin and Evelyn Waugh in Malvern
(1991)

Williams, Dorothy,
The Lygons of Madresfield Court
(2001)

INDEX

The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader’s search tools.

Abdy, Diana 196

Abdy, Sir Robert 242

Abelson, Tamara (aka Talbot Rice) 63

Aberconway, Lady Christabel 132

Abingdon Arms (Beckley) 118

Abyssinia 245–6, 247, 252, 255

Acton, Harold 35, 39, 40–3, 48–9, 51, 52–3, 55, 56, 57, 60, 63, 71, 73, 78, 80, 89, 102, 105, 111, 113, 118, 120, 128, 238, 256, 271, 290

Humdrum
111

the Albany (London) 177

Alington, Lady 254

All Souls College (Oxford) 61

Ampleforth School 260

Ampthill, Dowager Lady 255